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PROLOGUE

So, or at least fading to thin white lines over the years Sos can never be set right, never be ain, no matter how many seasons pass

In this regard, wounded s Cut them deeply — slice off their tops or carve open their flanks — and the disfigure

So it ith Frozen Head Mountain, in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains of East Tennessee In the early 1960s, Frozen Head’s northern slope — thickly forested with hardwoods and hemlocks — was blasted and bulldozed away by wildcat strip ists called it the Big Mary vein, and for three years, Big Mary was illegally carved up, carted away, and fed into the insatiable maw of Bull Run Stea Mary’s vein ran dry, and the lines and stubby, hulking haul trucks — departed as abruptly as they’d appeared

They left behind a mutilated mountainside, naked and exposed, its rocky bones battered by the sun and the rain, the heat and the cold After every rain, a witch’s brew of acids and heavythe soil and streams in its path

And yet; and yet Nature is persistent and insistent Years after the wildcattersinto the shale, latching onto bits of windblown soil and leaves Scrubby trees — black locust and Virginia pine — slowly followed, clawing tenuous toeholds in the rubble A stunted sham of a forest returned, one instinctively shunned by birds and deer and even huht spirit

And so it was the perfect place to conceal a body

Like the mountain, the corpse was partially reclaimed by the persistence and insistence of Nature A year passed, or perhaps two or three or five One spring afternoon, a seedpod on a nearby black locust tree split open, and half a dozen dark, papery seeds wafted away on a warm mountain breeze Five of the six seeds drifted and sifted into deep crevices in the shale The sixth spun and swirled and settled into a neat oval recess: the vacant eye orbit of a now-bare skull By su pale tendrils of root threading down through fissures in bone and rock One day a fehted on the skull, tiptoed inside, and began to build her small papery palace And so was fordo corpse

The world contains a multitude of postmortem microcosms Many remain forever undiscovered But all leave some mark, some indelible stain, upon the world; upon the collective soul of mankind

Soive rise to reclamation or redemption

PART 1

In the Beginning

And the earth ithout form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep

— GENESIS 1:2

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made

— GENESIS 3:1

SEPTEMBER 1992

CHAPTER 1

Brockton

Tugging the battered steel door of the office tight against the fraave the key a quick, wiggling twist Just as the dead bolt thunked into place, the phone on the other side of the door began to ring Shaking my head, I removed the key and turned toward the stairwell “It’s Labor Day,” I called over my shoulder, as if the caller could hear me “It’s a holiday I’m not here”

But the phone naggedback toward the door, the key still in ive in, the phone fell silent “Thank you,” I said and turned away again Before I had ti So on Labor Day, and whoever it was, they were damned determined to reach me

“All right, all right,” Iopen the door “Hold your horses” Leaning across the mounds of mail, memos, and other bureaucratic detritus that had accumulated over the course of the suy Departed a stack of envelopes, setting off an avalanche, which I tried — and failed — to stop I’d been without a secretary since May; a new one was scheduled to start soon, but meanwhile, I wasn’t just the department’s chair service, and I was lousy at all of those tasks The envelopes hit the floor and fanned out beneath the desk “Crap,” I y Department”

“Good mornin’, sir,” drawled a country-boy voice that sounded faan County” The voice was familiar; I’d worked with Cotterell on ato Knoxville and the University of Tennessee “I’ to reach Dr Brockton”

“You’ve got hi “How are you, Sheriff?”

“Oh, hey there, Doc I’in’ in Didn’t know this was your direct line”

“We’ve got the phone systeht through to the boss What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

“We got another live one for you, Doc I mean, another dead one” He chuckled at the joke, one I’d heard a hundred times in a decade of forensic fieldwork “Some fella was up on Frozen Head Mountain yesterday, fossil hunting — that’s what he says, leastwise — and he found some bones at a ol’ strip mine up there”

I felt a fae of adrenaline — it happened every tilad I’d turned back to answer the phone “Are the bones still where he found them?”

“Still there I reckon he knew better’n to mess with ’eot s alone till you show up and do your thing”

“I wish my students paid me as much mind, Sheriff Have you seen the bones? You sure they’re human?”

“I ain’t seen ’eet to ButHient? — both says it’s human Small, maybe a woman or a kid, but human for sure”

“Meffert? Youthe man’s name — his two naation agent assigned to Morgan County had a ton Harrison Meffert II — that made him sound like a member of Parliament His nickna from a hillbilly comic strip The names spanned a wide spectrum, and Meffert hient and quick-witted, but affable and respectful aood man,” I said “If he says it’s human, I reckon it is”

“Me and Bubba, we figured there weren’t no point calling you out last night,” Cotterell drawled on “Tough to find your way up that ht, let alone pitch dark Besides, whoever it is, they ain’t any deader today’n what they was last night”